Unseen Academicals

notice the words ‘Archchancellor’s Choice’ in garish type on the packet.
    As he handed the packet back, something small and colourful dropped out on to the floor. Henry, with an agility unexpected in a wizard so far up the main sequence as described in the well-known Owlspring/Tips Diagram, * reached down quickly and snatched it up, muttering something about ‘not letting it get dirty’.
    ‘You could eat your dinner off these floors,’ said Ridcully sharply, and probably would, he added to himself.
    ‘Only the collectors get so annoyed if there is a speck of dust on them and I give mine to the butler’s little boy,’ Henry went on blithely. He turned the pasteboard over and frowned. ‘Notable Wizards of our Time, No. 9 of 50: Dr Able Baker, BC (Hons), Fdl, Kp, PdF (escrow), Director of Blit Studies, Brazeneck. I’m sure he’s already got this one.’ He dropped it into a waistcoat pocket. ‘Never mind, good for swapsies.’
    Ridcully could assess things quite fast, especially when fuelled by banked fires of rage.
    ‘The Wizla tobacco, snuff and rolling paper company,’ he said, ‘of Pseudopolis. Hmm, clever idea. Who’s in this from UU?’
    ‘Ah. Well, I have to admit that the Assembly and people of Pseudopolis are rather…patriotic in their outlook—’
    ‘I think the word is “parochial”, don’t you?’
    ‘Harsh words, considering that Ankh-Morpork’s the smuggest, most self-satisfied city in the world.’ This was self-evidently true, so Ridcully decided he hadn’t heard it.
    ‘You on one of these cards, then?’ he grunted.
    ‘They insisted, I’m afraid,’ said Henry. ‘I was born there, you see. Local boy and all that.’
    ‘And no one from UU,’ said Ridcully flatly.
    ‘Technically no, but Professor Turnipseed is in there as the inventor of Pex.’ As Henry said it, guilt and defiance fought for space in the sentence.
    ‘Pex?’ said Ridcully slowly. ‘You mean like Hex?’
    ‘Oh, no, not at all like Hex. Certainly not. The principle is quite different.’ Henry cleared his throat. ‘It’s run by chickens. They trigger the morphic resonator, or whatever it’s called. Your Hex, as I recall, utilizes ants, which are far less efficient.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘We get eggs we can eat.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound all that different, you know.’
    ‘Oh, come now. They are hundreds of times bigger! And Pex is in a purpose-built room, not strung haphazardly all over the place. Professor Turnipseed knows what he is doing, and even you, Mustrum, must acknowledge that the river of progress is fed by a thousand springs!’
    ‘And they didn’t all rise in bloody Brazeneck!’ said Ridcully.
    They glared at one another. Professor Turnipseed poked his head around the corner and pulled it back very quickly.
    ‘If we were the men our fathers were, we’d be throwing fireballs by now,’ said Henry.
    ‘The point is taken,’ said Ridcully. ‘Although, I must point out, our fathers were not wizards.’
    ‘That’s right, of course,’ said the former Dean. ‘Your father was a butcher, as I recall.’
    ‘That’s right. And your father owned a lot of cabbage fields,’ said Ridcully.
    There was a moment’s silence and then the former Dean said, ‘Remember the day we both turned up at UU?’
    ‘We fought like tigers as I recall,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘Good times, when you come to remember them,’ said the Dean.
    ‘Of course, we’ve all passed a lot of water over the bridge since then,’ said Ridcully. There was another pause and he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’
    ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said the former Dean.
    ‘So you are trying to play football?’ said Henry as they progressed majestically towards the Archchancellor’s office. ‘I did see something about it in the paper, but I thought it was a joke.’
    ‘Why, pray?’ said Ridcully as they began to walk across the Great Hall. ‘We have a fine sporting tradition, as well you know!’
    ‘Ah yes, tradition is the scourge of endeavour. Be sensible, Mustrum. The leopard may change his shorts, but I think he’d have a job getting into the ones he wore forty years ago. Oh, I see that you still have Mister Stibbons here?’
    ‘Er…’ began Ponder, looking from one to the other.
    Ponder Stibbons had once got one hundred per cent in a prescience exam by getting there the previous day. He could see a little storm cloud when it was beginning to grow.
    ‘How’s the football going, lad?’
    ‘Oh, it seems to be going